Word file busy errors

[John Lockwood]

When Mac OS X 10.4.6 was released I upgraded the users (and our Mac OS X
FileServer) to that version so as to benefit from the fix to the "Word - Too
many files open" error that plagued Network Home Directory users. This
indeed did fix that problem.

Around that time Microsoft also issued Office 2003 11.2.3 as an update. I
have also installed this on all machines.

Since then we have (and continue to) experience problems where Word files
(and I believe also Excel files) are claimed to be 'busy' when no-one
actually has them open. This would be resolved by rebooting the FileServer
(obviously not something I can do all the time), or worked around by
duplicating the file, throwing the original (busy) version away and using
the copy (which is not busy).

Related to this problem I believe is a situation where a file may already be
open by a user and when they try saving changes it will not let you. This
can be worked around by copying and pasting in to a new file.

The FileServer is running Mac OS X 10.4.6 and AppleShare is configured to
'Inherit Permissions from parent' and Access Control Lists are not being
used.

Clients are also running Mac OS X 10.4.6 and are a mixture of PowerMac G4,
PowerBook G4, iMac G4, Mac mini G4, and a couple of iMac G5 computers.

Note: the FileServer shared volume in this case is called "Shared" and in
the root of that volume I do have a folder called ".TemporaryItems" which
currently has permissions set to drwxrwxrwt

As far as I can see, this is only affecting Word (and possible Excel) I have
had no reports of problems with Adobe Indesign, Acrobat, TextEdit,
FileMaker, etc.

Thanks, John Lockwood

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi John:

I can't help, other than to say that I suspect the error "might" go away if
you were to access the file server by SMB instead of AppleShare.

The problem is apparently due to Apple playing around with the bitmask they
use to transfer file locking information between server and client.

It's likely to affect Word alone because Word is about the only application
out there that uses a streaming file access protocol.

Sorry to be no help at all...

Cheers

When Mac OS X 10.4.6 was released I upgraded the users (and our Mac OS X
FileServer) to that version so as to benefit from the fix to the "Word - Too
many files open" error that plagued Network Home Directory users. This
indeed did fix that problem.

Around that time Microsoft also issued Office 2003 11.2.3 as an update. I
have also installed this on all machines.

Since then we have (and continue to) experience problems where Word files
(and I believe also Excel files) are claimed to be 'busy' when no-one
actually has them open. This would be resolved by rebooting the FileServer
(obviously not something I can do all the time), or worked around by
duplicating the file, throwing the original (busy) version away and using
the copy (which is not busy).

Related to this problem I believe is a situation where a file may already be
open by a user and when they try saving changes it will not let you. This
can be worked around by copying and pasting in to a new file.

The FileServer is running Mac OS X 10.4.6 and AppleShare is configured to
'Inherit Permissions from parent' and Access Control Lists are not being
used.

Clients are also running Mac OS X 10.4.6 and are a mixture of PowerMac G4,
PowerBook G4, iMac G4, Mac mini G4, and a couple of iMac G5 computers.

Note: the FileServer shared volume in this case is called "Shared" and in
the root of that volume I do have a folder called ".TemporaryItems" which
currently has permissions set to drwxrwxrwt

As far as I can see, this is only affecting Word (and possible Excel) I have
had no reports of problems with Adobe Indesign, Acrobat, TextEdit,
FileMaker, etc.

Thanks, John Lockwood

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[nate]

So is there no resolution to this issue if connecting via SMB isn't an
option?

I have a client with the exact same issue with Word and AFP network
home directories. The whole school full of 10.4.6 clients can't
reliably save Word docs anywhere in their network home directories.

They're all using Office X, I believe, and not 2004.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Well, if you had local home directories...

Sorry: As far as I know, there is no *reliable* solution to this issue.

But I am not a network administrator: you might want to ask on a
Macintosh-focused networking group. I understand that there are various
things you can do to make the problem "better".

Rob Daly from Microsoft provided us with a *Really Scary* work-around that
you may wish to try, here:
http://word.mvps.org/Mac/CantSaveToServer.html

Unless you are a really capable network administrator, do NOT TRY THIS AT
HOME

Cheers

So is there no resolution to this issue if connecting via SMB isn't an
option?

I have a client with the exact same issue with Word and AFP network
home directories. The whole school full of 10.4.6 clients can't
reliably save Word docs anywhere in their network home directories.

They're all using Office X, I believe, and not 2004.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

 

[nate]

Thanks, John, but disabling file locking isn't something I'd call a
viable solution. It's there for a reason, so I'd rather not break other
things to fix this problem. In my opinion, a really capable network
admin would never even think of trying this.

Coincidentally, I have another client (OS X Server and clients, all
running 10.4.6) who has this same problem, and they use local accounts,
not network homes. It happens less often for most users but frequently
enough for some. These are local accounts saving files to an AFP share.

That's why when I initially saw all the brouhaha about this, I wondered
why my local accounts were having the same or similar problems as all
these folks with network homes.

 

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi nate:

I agree: I don't think Rob, the man who discovered the work-around, ever
thought it was a "viable" solution More like "desperately clutching at
straws..." He found it while looking to see if there was any way Microsoft
could work around it...

The fact remains that it can work, and there is a certain narrow set of
circumstances in which some might find it useful.

There's a bug in the code handling file locking -- you can get the problem
on a Windows server too. Microsoft is very frustrated by this: it's a bug,
it's not their bug, but Word is one of the very few apps hit by it.

Word uses an extremely complex "streaming" access to files. If they disable
that, Word will be unable to open a substantial percentage of Word documents
saved by other users, and it will have no "Undo" or "Auto Recover" function.
Those features depending on streaming access.

As I have been known to say once or twice, the only reason I can think of
why Apple hasn't fixed this in the two years since they broke it, is
because the only company that ends up looking bad because of it is
Microsoft.

Apple itself has been quite remarkably silent on the issue. If I was wrong
in what I am saying, I would have expected one of Steve J's people to have
sent me at least one angry email by now

Cheers

Thanks, John, but disabling file locking isn't something I'd call a
viable solution. It's there for a reason, so I'd rather not break other
things to fix this problem. In my opinion, a really capable network
admin would never even think of trying this.

Coincidentally, I have another client (OS X Server and clients, all
running 10.4.6) who has this same problem, and they use local accounts,
not network homes. It happens less often for most users but frequently
enough for some. These are local accounts saving files to an AFP share.

That's why when I initially saw all the brouhaha about this, I wondered
why my local accounts were having the same or similar problems as all
these folks with network homes.

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <[email protected]>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410